Celebrated Photographers Olive Cotton
	NOTE: Linked large images in this collection have now been archived. If you would like to view images other than those thumbnailed here please contact us email.
OLIVE COTTON ..There were two separate periods in Olive Cotton's life as a photographer when she enjoyed the autonomy of a photographic studio and darkroom. The first was from 1941 until the end of the war: Max Dupain had asked her to take over the management of his Clarence Street studio while he was away as a camouflage officer with the RAAF. The next period came years later in the Central Western town of Cowra, where she opened a modest studio in 1964. This second studio lasted until October 1996, when she was eighty-five. ..After the Cowra studio closed there was a great sorting and collating of negatives - which in many cases were only proofed, and yet to be finely printed. Like all old photographers, she had simply run out of time. At the closing of her studio she had said, "I think I'm ready for a change". The change meant that many of her cherished but still-unrealised images would need to be finely printed by others; there were also plans for a book about country childhood. Some of the images here are a result of that comparatively recent collating. In particular there is a group of "new" Dupain studio pictures - the homely interior with retouching utensils and ever-struggling pot-plants on the windowsill; one of the hardier plants netted against the window, through which Olive photographed the city in rain and shine; the soulful Jean Lorraine, a great friend and model to the Dupain studio, with little Haidee McInerney (her sister-in-law), both gazing at the same globe of the world that Olive's grandfather had contemplated in a formal portrait several years earlier; Damien Parer and Phyl Riley "on location" for a fashion shoot, leaping in innocent pre-war playfulness off a sand dune at Bungan Beach. ..The wartime studio seems to have been a place where Olive worked very hard to keep up with the demands of commercial work, and also a haven where she enjoyed great freedom to experiment (there is, for example, a portrait by candlelight of Jean Lorraine, taken in 1943 - though the negative is long lost, and only one vintage print exists). Olive was not prolific but constant in her art, over a period of more than 70 years. Moths on the Windowpane is probably her last image - one that was made at her home shortly before the closing of the Cowra studio, and at that stage only proofed. Yet it's strongly connected to the other earlier studio: the little moths are like the raindrops on the city window, with Darling Harbour dark and blurred beyond. Sally McInerney
All the photographs catalogued below are taken by Olive Cotton and printed by her and others. The following terms have been used in cataloguing them: [V]: indicates the photograph is a vintage print: it was printed by the Olive Cotton at about the same time as it was taken, e.g. 1942 [V] means the photograph was taken in and printed about 1942 by Olive. Where a photograph has been printed by Olive at a later date, we have indicated the date the photograph was taken / the date this particular print was printed, e.g. 1942/1990 means the photograph was taken in 1942, but this particular print was printed by Olive in 1990. Numbered edition: From early 1991 until 1994, Olive began editioning her work. Photographs printed by Olive during this period bear a number in an edition of 25. However, none of the editions was completed: indeed, in many cases only a handful of prints were done. The presence of this edition number confirms that the print was made by Olive herself. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Olive Cotton usually printed her photographs on Agfa photographic paper. Printed by Sydney Dark Room/Roger Scott: From 1995 onwards, Olive stopped editioning and printing her work. The printing was entrusted to Sydney Dark Room 1995-1996, and to photographer Roger Scott 1997-the present day. Olive's annotated comments on the printing appear on the back of some of these prints. A/Ed Authorised edition: In 1999, we commenced a new edition of Olive's work in a smaller format. The Authorised Edition of 90 is printed by noted Australian photographer Roger Scott, with Olive's signature in facsimile, each numbered and signed verso by Olive's daughter, Sally McInerney. The photographs are catalogued below in chronological order, using the date the photographs were taken.
	1 (Glass Bottles) c.1930/1998. Silver gelatin print, printed by Roger Scott, signed in the margin below right, 18.3 x 16.5cm.	$3,800
	2 Fire Escape 1935/1995. Silver gelatin print, printed by Sydney Dark Room, titled and dated in another hand in the margin below left, signed below right, 37 x 25.6cm.	$4,500
	3 The Peg Basket 1935/1998. Silver gelatin print, printed by Roger Scott, signed in the margin below right, 15.5 x 20.2cm.	$3,800